Education UCL student union bans military

And as Mandy Rice-Davies famously retorted, "Well, he would, wouldn't he?"

His side obviously lost.

 

Ramble is still right though, scalding (scolding) military personnel isn't a nice thing to do. Unless they're the asshats, I have to problem with people throwing burning hot coffee at them.

 

Thing is I dont know anyone who'd vote for that, maybe its just southerners (did I go there? )

 

I don't know anyone who voted to go to Iraq, or Afghanistan. Welcome to Democracy™.

 

You should know by now, I'm grammar police

 

Actually Nexxo, i know of 396 people who voted for it. Quite a scary thought that 396 people take a country of 65,000,000 to war - but I guess that's demos kratos of the modern rockin' varient eh? One wonders about the issue of collective responsability for a war in a representative parlimentary democracy. Ah well...

 

A few relevant points here (note - I'm in the TA with friends who have done/are about to deploy to Iraq/Afghanistan so am not unbiased in this).

1) The head of the student union has been suspended pending an extraordinary general meeting after the way the AGM was chaired. It appears she abused her position of chair of the meeting to support the motion and also caused the meeting to be fraudulently declared quorate. Quite a lot of the stink about this vote is in the way it was handled, rather than the actual outcome - Sussex uni student union for instance holds an almost identical position.
2) You've got to seperate Jus ad Bello and Jus in Bello when talking about Iraq/Afghanistan and the armed forces here.
Jus ad Bello is where most people have concerns regarding Iraq and Afghanistan. Right back to Thomas Aquinas and even Augustine of Hippo, this has been regarded as the responsibility of Kings (and nowadays, Parliament), not of soldiers. A fundamental feature of armies - particularly in democratic societies - is that they cannot say "no" to orders like this. In a democratic system like ours, Parliament is sovereign and hence responsibility for deciding to go to war is held by the MPs - and by extension the electorate as a whole, which includes soldiers (when they are allowed to vote - the system often puts major obstacles to voting in the way of those deployed on operations).
Jus in Bello regards the just methods by which war may be waged. While there are some concerns about this (e.g. regarding the use of cluster bombs) there are by and large very few complaints about the methods by which the British armed forces wage war. Historically this has always been the responsibility of soldiers at all levels to comply with - and when they break it they have always been punished. This was at true at the Nuremberg trials as it is in Iraq and Afghanistan today (where a small number of soldiers have been prosecuted and convicted of war crimes).
Training in the law of armed conflict (Geneva and Hague conventions, Geneva Protocols, etc.) is mandatory for all members of the UK armed forces at all levels at least annually, and is carried out in some depth before deployments (including a large number of exercises covering it, etc.).
Note that historically very, very few soldiers have been convicted of Jus ad Bello crimes - and they have always been very senior officers who got a bit political. The only one that springs to mind is Admirak Donitz who was convicted at Nuremberg of "being prepared to wage aggressive war" - a farcical verdict if ever there was one, but in the circumstances the man who succeeded Hitler as head of Nazi Germany was never not going to be convicted of something.
3) If the student union in question wanted to do something about people being sent to war, surely they would have banned the Labour party and not the Army from the fresher's fair? It was after all the current government, formed by the Labour party that sent us to war - not the Army. Thus, despite their claims, this is an explicitly anti-military not anti-war vote. Given that one of the proposers (Sham somethingorother) is on public record as supporting the "legitimate resistance" in Iraq and Afghanistan, this is hardly surprising.
4) Some of you have been going on about protecting students from false advertising about the military. We've been at war in Iraq for nearly 5 years now and Afghanistan for nearly 7 - with huge news coverage in that time. Exactly how stupid do you think these students (even regular soldiers) are not to have noticed this and realise that in joining the armed forces they might be sent to these places?

 

2: You sign up to the army, you know that you sign away your choice. Even choosing not to choose is making a choice. You have final responsibility for those choices and the actions they entail.

3: I never said they were being rational about it. They should have banned both Labour and Tories, really.

4. I'll give you that. But the army is trying its best to portray it as a just and noble (and above all, successful) war. I suspect that it is not entuirely coincidental that Prince Harry's cover got "blown" ten weeks into his tour of duty. Good propaganda. Let the boy do a few months, arrange with our US mates to "blow his cover", then send him safely home again before he can step on a mine or something. Hundreds of eager young things sign up in a fit of patriotic pride.

 

Just because the politicians started off the conflict doesn't stop it being illegal. Just because you're paid to do it doesn't make it right. In your case, being a security guard or whatever is a perfectly legal job. Murdering is not. At face value, there's nothing wrong with being paid to follow orders, and that's the job of the military. But they still have an obligation to follow the law, even if orders are in violation of some law or another. The politicians are certainly to blame for putting the soldiers in such a situation in the first place, but they're still responsible for their own actions and as such should be held accountable.

 

... or be outed as the guy calling in an air strike on some women and kids...

 

Agreed. However, carrying on with the "choosing not to chose", what are the consequences of everybody chosing not to join the armed forces? Athenian democracy only survived because of the Spartan and Thespian Hoplites who were prepared to stand and die at Thermopylae, or the Athenian Hoplites and Oarsmen of Marathon and Salamis. Throughout history the same has always been true - from the blindingly obvious of WW2 to the recent British intervention in Sierra Leone. Trying to pin final responsibility on servicemen for the decision to go to war is frankly a case of moral cowardice in anything but a military junta - and in a democratic state it is an abdication of the responsibilities of a citizen.
Hence, your argument implies that all those physically capable of joining the armed forces but who did not therefore bear moral responsibility in cases where military force should have been used but was not due to lack of resources, where deterrence proved to be insufficient, or where units were too small and suffered disproportionate casualties as a result.
On that basis, pacifists are responsible for the 50 or so million dead of WW2. I think that's bull****, but that's the logical consequence of your argument.

Agreed. Funnily enough being aspiring politicians they didn't.

Are you surprised? Are you seriously telling me you could ask a young Tom to risk their life on a daily basis for 6 months in a war you were telling them was unjust, ignoble and a failure? Whatever they may truly think, the army leadership MUST act like that due to it's responsibilities towards the guys on the ground.

From that point of view, he would have been better off completing his 4 month tour. Besides, from the point of view of the Royal family it would be even better if he was injured - looks much more heroic and strengthens public support for the Royals at the expense of the government.
If you look into it, it does seem that everything the army did was to keep things quiet. There is no mention of how he got out there, implying he may well have flown out with UKSF (not to protect him, but simply because they WILL keep their mouths shut - and regularly do about far more important things). When he got out there he spent most of his time in a Gurkha base - the essential point about the Gurkhas being that they don't speak English very well so are the least likely unit in the country to talk to the press.
I'd be surprised if you got many people joining because of that - the effect on the morale of serving troops will be a lot stronger. When signing up we swear allegiance to the Queen, her Heirs and Successors. That her heirs and successors are prepared to take the same risks as we are is important, and one of the fundamentals of leadership.

Hence my comment about Jus in Bello - you cannot follow an illegal order, and have a duty to report it up the chain of command and/or to the RMP at the first opportunity. There have been a small number of prosecutions of British servicemen for war crimes over the past year or so...

 

QFT

 

Then again, if soldiers had had the choice, there might not have been any World Wars at all. Remember the Christmas Truce of 1914?

The response from the military commanders is telling:

Desertion during war time is a capital offense for a reason.

If the barbarian hordes came over the hill to pillage our country, I have no doubt that most people (including me) would take up arms and fight back. Switzerland trains and arms every citizen for that eventuality, but it doesn't go out looking for trouble. There's a difference.

A true show of responsibility would be not to send them to risk their lives at all, unless really necessary for the defense of one's country. Not many wars like that, lately.

Thin line between heroic flesh wound and lethal injury... it's a big gamble to take.

 

Problem is that in modern warfare you would be slaughtered wholesale. The likes of 3rd Shock Army would go through a resistance like that and scarcely notice the bump (think "hot chainsaw through butter"). Despite what Hollywood would have you believe, there is an enormous difference between someone with a gun who wants to fight and a soldier. And the soldier will win every time. The other problem is that it typically takes 20 years to grow senior officers and NCOs into their roles - something those spontaneously taking up arms also don't have a chance over.

The Swiss system is a bit of a different example - not just an armed populace, but one that does an initial period of military training and regular training after that. The UK equivalent would be if the entire population was conscripted into the TA. The Swiss also have one or two advantages we don't:
1) Big mountains on all sides - good defensive terrain.
2) Surrounded on all sides by NATO - so they can't be invaded by land without the destruction of NATO first.
3) Relatively less dependent on the global economy - the UK is more dependent than any other country on what happens overseas, so the government is more likely to take an armed interest in events overseas.

Not possible for the military to do in a democracy. Not a problem if we were to have a military coup, but somehow I can't see that being possible.

Not such a thin line nowadays - given current body armour and medical care it takes incredibly serious injuries to actually kill someone. Missing limbs, blindness, etc. are more common than they ever used to be simply because people are now surviving injuries/attacks that even 10 years ago would have killed them on the battlefield before a medic even saw them.

 

I served 16 years with the British Army and have been a ''civvy'' for just over 2 years now. I support our troops through and through although this current Government is dead in the water. It is the Government that has taken our country to war, not the Armed Forces.

What the stupid guy ''Sham'' as he is known fails to realise is that if it wasnt for the Armed Forces having fought for Great Britain in the past and defended Democracy and the right to freedom of speech, he'd not have a soap box to stand on and spout his verbal dribble.

 

Now I have a question, were banning military stalls but I'm sure they would let Exxon come set up a job stall. Oil is the "secret" agenda of the war yet no one would blink about that. We need to pick one way or the other, either we fight to defend our resources or we adjust to losing them. All go or no...

I completely agree with indigo and from what I hear this is how most soldiers feel. Sometimes the government makes mistakes, now the war is not a mistake. There was a mistake in some of the intelligence behind the reasons for the war but the heart of it remains true. Also when this started I was aware it would be 10+ years before we left, gorilla warfare hardly ever ends. Money is what it comes down too, we have too much of it invested in middle eastern oil to lose control of that region. Also keep in mind America sold Iraq weapons of mass destruction including mustard gas etc... so at some point they were there, france also sold them a nuclear reactor that was shortly taken out, but how do we know the rods weren't removed first? I believe it was fully functioning for 10 days before the attack on it.

 

QFT

Remembering to my time at Uni the SU were incapable of using the SU for the students. It was all posturing and making a name so that it would look good on the CV. Luckly most of the time the policys of the SU were so outlandish that there was no way the goals could be met within the time frame of office.
Although there was one occation that the SU decided to ban companies related to oil. This didnt sit too well with the engineering students (myself included) but as the event was being held on university property there was nothing they could do about it apart from shout at those who attended from outside the venue.

And no. i didnt give a damm about Student politics as i was using my time to study.

 

This is not the university recruitment of officer material, it's the recruitment of the cannon fodder. And on a day when the MOD are being criticised over teaching aids they've produced (together with T Blair and G Bush) on the Iraq war that make no mention of such things as WMD, UN resolutions, civilian casualties, accurate numbers of Western troops killed and injured, and other petty details.

 

Woo UCL.

On a more constructive note, I didn't even know we had a meeting, let alone what the topics of debate were...

 

I was speaking metaphorically (the reference to "barbarians" being a hint). The point is that there would be no difficulty in motivating people to actually defend their country. Everything else needs indoctrination and the threat of a bullet if you decide to turn and run. That ought to tell you something.

It takes an incredibly small injury to kill someone during war. High-tech medical care is not available on remote battle fields in Afghanistan. I'd suggest you check the casualty list... or National Geographic's photo reportage of a field hospital in Iraq.

Injuries, rather than death, are more common not because medical care is getting better, but because weapons are getting better. It is always more desireable to maim your enemy than kill them. Bodies do not drain resources and attention. Wounded soldiers do.